Patent battles and competition with George Westinghouse temporarily slowed Edison's research on electrical light systems, but competition spurred his research on the phonograph. Because it had yet to provide much income and was still widely considered to be a toy, Edison had let the phonograph languish. But Alexander Graham Bell, distraught that he had not invented one first, saw great market potential in the device. In 1885 he and two of his colleagues applied for a patent on their invention, the "graphophone." The graphophone depended heavily upon Edison's phonograph technology. Bell then approached Edison with a proposition to jointly market an improved phonograph. Edison, furious, set his energy to improving the phonograph. He produced several new models in the early 1890s and searched for a dependable power source that would make the device useful for the home market. He found the perfect match of

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